What Messages Are We Modeling?

A 2015 Gallup poll shows that a third of Americans “want animals to have the same rights as people.” Other polls show that a strong majority of people in the U.S. believe that animals – including farmed animals – deserve strong protections.

Yet the vast majority of people still eat animals.

A 2015 Consumer Reports poll shows that “almost 8 in 10 American consumers say they would rather buy an American-made product than an imported one.”

Yet a 2016 AP poll reveals that most Americans make their choices based on price, rather than whether an item is made in the U.S.

The gulf between our beliefs and our actions is called (in social psychology circles) the attitude/behavior gap.

What this gap highlights is whether we’re doing our best to model a message that reflects our deepest values.